Awesome Movie

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

I might have enjoyed Conquest Of Mycenae a bit more if we actually had Hercules defeat a real monster from the bowels of the Earth. But the monster here is all too human.Which is the problem I found with this film. During the entire film right up to when Moloch takes off his mask we are taken and teased with a bag of supernatural tricks in the story. It was quite a let down to see this was a Peplum version of Phantom Of The Opera.Gordon Scott isn't even the real Hercules, but he's a strong dude and a prince named Glaucus who is the heir of one of many vassal states of Mycenaie whose tribute is young virgins. Scott lets folks call him Hercules because of his feats of strength which are impressive.Nothing special in this Peplum picture.

This peplum adventure has a below average plot which threatens to sink the whole film at points - many actions that the characters take are nonsensical and the film doesn't know whether it wants to be a muscleman epic, a war epic or a simple revenge or love story. Instead, it mixes all these elements together into one big whole with, it has to be said, not entirely successful results. Which is a shame, as the battle sequences which eventually occur at the end of the film are some of the most vivid I've seen in a peplum film.Confusion arises right at the beginning of the film when you realise that Gordon Scott's name isn't actually Hercules - here he plays Glauco, a king's son. So in fact the title is just an American cash-in on the popular Hercules series. Secondly, the title makes the Moloch sound like some terrible monster or fiend, when in fact he turns out to be the son of a queen who was born with terribly distorted features (revealed in the amusing showdown) and who is forced to wear a bull-head mask which makes him look like a minotaur. He also lives in a cave and amuses himself by firing arrows into chained female victims.The first hour of the film is quite slow, with the typical court intrigue and lots of secret meetings (which amusingly take place in broad daylight, with the authorities not even noticing). Glauco disguises himself as a slave to win the queen's favour, which he does, but he's eventually found out and thrown in prison anyway - so what was the point, really? His escape from the doorless prison - climbing up the walls with his hands and feet - is a clever one, but most of the action in this film occurs in the final twenty minutes and comes as too little, too late.Up until then, there are at least a few items of interest to keep things going and the plot moving along. A gladiatorial combat has nothing on GLADIATOR (not surprising, considering the budget), but I did like the fact that the hero's weapons had been treated to shatter on impact. There is the expected romance with a beautiful woman (Alessandra Panaro is the alluring one) and a number of good people die in vain. Gordon Scott's hero is an unusually wooden one, and the actor lacks the natural charm which he brought to his TARZAN films. Even the bad guys aren't defined clearly, and seen only in a few scenes; nobody's character is developed in this film. Although I did like the joke that one of the "good" characters is called Pasifae! On the plus side, the print is one of the best I've seen (I viewed it on an NTSC Sinister Cinema tape), giving the film colour and definition which make it more enjoyable to watch than a typically washed-out, bleached print which seems to be the norm for this long-forgotten movies. Secondly, the battle scenes at the end of the film are fine, packed with bloodless violence, and seem quite epic in nature. Thirdly, the film's finale is a great and unexpected one. A coven of witches turn up and cause lots of natural disasters like floors collapsing, lightning, fires etc to kill off a load of extras. These disappear (?) and Scott turns up to fight a prolonged fight with the Moloch, which has to be one of the best choreographed fights that I've seen in a film like this - it's excellently staged. However, these parts cannot compensate for the film's disjointed feel as a whole, and HERCULES VS THE MOLOCH isn't one of the genre's best.

This peplum has to be one of the low points of the entire genre: not only does it not generate any interest or particular excitement throughout (most of the time I was merely confused by the plot overcrowded with factions, conspirators and usurpers), but the title itself is a cheat: Hercules doesn't really feature in it at all - it's merely the name under which hides muscle-bound hero Gordon Scott, actually the prince to a neighboring empire attempting to free Mycenae from the influence of paganism and the ruling corruption and sadism; Moloch, then, is nothing like the man-eating God seen in Fritz Lang's METROPOLIS (1927) but the disfigured heir - with his face hidden behind an iron mask shaped like a wolf's head! - to the throne who's kept hidden in the dungeons (with a line-up of drum-beating females as company!) and occasionally offered victims he can amuse himself with by shooting at them with arrows. Actually, the latter scenes are nicely atmospheric (director Ferroni had earlier made the fine Gothic-horror piece MILL OF THE STONE WOMEN [1960]); by the way, the minor peplum LE BACCANTI (1961) - also helmed by Ferroni - had featured a similar set of underground females, while some of the exterior scenes appear to have been lifted from the director's own - and vastly superior - THE Trojan WAR(1961)! Interestingly, the villainous female lead is played by Rosalba Neri who's undeniably attractive but not yet the favored raunchy starlet of Euro-Cult; also in the cast are Arturo Dominici (as a despicable officer in Neri's service) and Michel Lemoine (in view of his unusual looks, it's surprising to find him on the side of the righteous and carry the film's secondary love interest to boot!).Note: according to the DVD Drive-In review for Trimark's Box Set "The Adventures Of Hercules", in which this film is included, it's written that Tim Lucas suspects that Mario Bava may have been involved in its making; apart from the lighting scheme in the dungeon scenes with Moloch, as already mentioned, it's hard to agree with this - but, then, Bava's own peplums hardly constitute his best work...

Following in the footsteps of his pal Steve "Hercules" Reeves, Gordon Scott of the Tarzan films takes a stab at the Greek-Roman scene by playing an ungodly strong Prince who is determined to thwart an evil queen who looks like Catherine Zeta-Jones and her disfigured giant of a son Moloch, raised to be a reincarnation of a good with a wolf's head by the same name. Posing as Hercules, Scott allows himself to be taken "hostage" along with other people in a plot device clearly lifted from the stories of Theseus and the Minotaur and tries to earn the queen's trust but when he falls in love with the beautiful and good- natured Princess Medea, who favors letting the people worship the Earth Goddess and is only the step daughter of the evil queen who married her father the king (which makes her the rightful heir to throne), things get complicated.Well done Italian epic with good production values and a decent performance by Gordon Scott as the film's hero. Of course, it's hard for me to rate his performance since his voice is dubbed over by another actor, but he appears to be in the spirit of things, along with the rest of the cast.Scott later played Remus to Steve Reeves Romulus in "Duel of the Titans".